One of the recurring problems for ESL (English as a Second Language) learners and other non-native English speakers is what preposition to use with regard to location—specifically, in, at, or on.
This varies seemingly unpredictably, so that one says:
The lack of a neutral pronoun in English is a persistent thorn in the side of academic writing—especially given that, with the growing demands for gender equality, the old-fashioned use of the masculine form for generic descriptions is increasingly frowned upon.
As a translator and editor, I frequently witness what a serious headache this problem is for my academic clients. It would be good if we could do what Swedish has done, which is adopt a new word for the purpose (hen—which is between hon [she] and han [he]). But as far as I know, there is nothing like that on the horizon (perhaps se—pron. /si/—a blend of she and he?).
So we are forced to improvise.
—such as I’m going to+verb, or more+<adverb/adjective> instead of <adverb/adjective>+more?
Answer: Actually, I would argue that modern Hebrew is fairly resistant to English grammatical forms—mainly because its grammar is much simpler (comprising the equivalent of past simple, present simple, and simple future), with no mechanisms for emulating tenses such as present perfect (e.g. I have gone) or present continuous (e.g. going) or conditional (would go).
As a result, the sample constructions that you suggest — e.g. going to <verb> and more <adjective> (instead of <adjective> more) are not only uncommon, but indicative of poor Hebrew usage.
This is a classic mongoose question—one of my favourite kind—so-called after the story of a South African farmer who, concerned about an influx of poisonous snakes on his land, tentatively agreed to a Ministry of Agriculture official’s suggestion that he adopt a mongoose (which is very adept at hunting snakes).
This is a wonderful illustration of how, when it comes to language, there is only one hard-and-fast rule: UISS-IWC-MINS (Unless It Sounds Silly–In Which Case, Make It Not So)—or UISS, for short. The rest are all guidelines.
Apart from the context (which is the biggest clue), there is slight, but detectable difference in length:
Fun question. Off the top of my head (I might add to these later):
This is a very topical question, which I happened to touch upon in a recent post of my Hebrew blog, as it concerns the importance of rhythm in language .
Trump clearly twigged many years ago that the characteristic meter of English speech is the trochee (an element comprising a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one)—as in the words mother, father, daughter, other, Anglo-Saxon, etc.—and that native English speakers subconsciously prefer it, and short Anglo-Saxon English words, to the meters and long words of other origin. He’s been exploiting this to pitch sales and close deals ever since.
Despite the flattering allusions to the superlative virtues of the Hebrew language—and setting aside the sweeping and unfounded generalisations that Hebrew [people?] are the smartest or have superior emotional intelligence—I doubt that it could be said that Hebrew has the greatest number of adjectives of all languages. This, for three reasons, off the bat:
Oh, boy. Don’t get me started…
Oh, alright, then Continue reading
Notes by Autumn Light 